IN HISTORY: Lakota Men Appear In Warner Brothers Film

Fifty years ago, real American Indians rarely made it to the silver screen. When Warner Brothers Studio decided to make a movie about George Armstrong Custer, however, the Hollywood studio negotiated a deal with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to “import” a number of Lakota men from South Dakota reservations. According to a July 11, 1941 report in the Los Angeles Times, the men were housed in “modern barracks” at the studio ranch near Calabasas, California and appeared in the highly fictionalized film “They Died With Their Boots On,” but the role of Crazy Horse was played by Mexican-American actor Anthony Quinn.

To read a 1941 review of the film, published in the New York Times, click here.